In automotive manufacturing, electronic injection moulding, metal processing and other production scenarios that rely on moulds, the traditional manual ledger, paper labels or barcode tracking methods are becoming a bottleneck for efficiency improvement. By giving moulds a ‘digital identity’, RFID allows mould management to be upgraded from ‘manual experience-driven’ to ‘data automation-driven’, unlocking the key to full-process intelligence for the manufacturing industry. The key to unlock the whole process intelligence for the manufacturing industry.
The manual tracking of the three major pain points: eficacia, accuracy and cost of triple losses
Positioning by ‘looking for’, the high cost of time an auto parts factory has statistics: an average of 1.5 hours per shift to spend looking for moulds, the annual cumulative waste of about 3,000 hours of production time, equivalent to a production line downtime of 15 días. Paper labels are easily defaced, barcodes need to be aligned with the characteristics of scanning, so that ‘find the mould’ has become a ‘hidden source of downtime’ in the production process.
RFID how to achieve the mould management ‘automation revolution’
(1) real-time positioning: let the mould ‘their own location report’
Embedded in the mould body metal-resistant, heat-resistant UHF RFID tags (such as NXP UCODE 8 chip), with the deployment of fixed read-write in the workshop can be achieved.
Seconds positioning: without manual code scanning, moulds are automatically triggered to identify when they enter or leave the warehouse and arrive at the workstation, and the system updates the position in real time, so the search time is compressed from 30 minutes to 30 segundos.
Path tracing: Record the mould movement track (por ejemplo. ’14:00 transfer from warehouse No. 2 to injection moulding machine No. 3′), accurately locate the lost or misplaced moulds, and increase the inventory accuracy rate from 85% Para 99.9%.
(2) Automatic data collection: eliminating ‘artificial data silos’
In traditional management, mould usage data (por ejemplo. processing times, load hours) are recorded manually by workers, with an omission rate of up to 30%. the RFID system automatically collects the data through workstation readers and uploads it directly to the MES system.
Production process automation, maintenance records digitised.
(3) Intelligent early warning: let the mould ‘actively say demand’
Based on the real-time data collected by RFID, the system realises automated decision-making through preset rules or AI algorithms.
Error prevention and early warning: when the die and equipment do not match (such as aluminium alloy die for magnesium alloy processing), the reader triggers an audible and visual alarm to prevent corrosion of the material or damage to the die, a die casting plant thus reducing 70% of the misuse of the die caused by scrapping.
Predictive maintenance: By analysing the cumulative use of moulds and vibration data, the system warns of component fatigue (por ejemplo. guide pillar wear, spring failure) 3-5 days in advance, and automatically generates maintenance work orders. After the application in an automotive mould factory, the number of sudden breakdowns and downtimes was reduced by 60%, and maintenance costs dropped by 25%.
(4) Gestión de inventario: from ‘manual inventory’ to ‘automatic reconciliation’
Door readers (por ejemplo. Impinj Speedway R700) at the entrance of the warehouse can read 200+ mould tags within 30m at one time, completing the inventory of 5,000 pieces of moulds in one minute, with an efficiency of 50 times that of manual inventory. The system synchronises inventory data in real time and automatically sends replenishment reminders to the purchasing department when a particular type of mould falls below safety stock, thus reducing the backlog of a mould leasing company by 40% and increasing the utilisation of warehouse space by 60%.
The implementation of the case: from the ‘pilot’ to ‘plant-wide coverage’ of the value of verification
The practice path of a domestic leading new energy automobile parts factory is of great reference value.
Pilot phase (3 meses): Deploying RFID tags on high-value battery shell moulds (a single set valued at more than 2 millones de yuanes) to achieve automatic records of access to the warehouse and reduce the loss rate of moulds from 5% Para 0.1%.
Expansion phase (6 meses): Deploying workstation readers in the press shop, linking the MES system to automatically match the mould process parameters, shortening the mould change time from 20 minutes to 12 minutos, and increasing the monthly production capacity of a single production line by 10%.
Factory-wide coverage (12 meses): Establishing a mould health assessment model, dynamically adjusting the maintenance plan according to the usage data collected by RFID, extending the average life span of moulds from 8,000 Para 12,000 ciclos de, and reducing the annual maintenance cost by RMB 1.5 millones.
